Jat people

The Jat people are a community of traditionally non-elite tillers and herders in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in late medieval times, and subsequently into the Delhi Territory, northeastern Rajputana, and the western Gangetic Plain in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu faiths, they are now found mostly in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab and the Indian states ofPunjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Traditionally involved in peasantry, the Jats took up arms against the Mughal Empire during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.  The community played an important role in the development of the martial Khalsa panthan of Sikhism.  The Hindu Jat kingdom reached its zenith under Suraj Mal of Bharatpur (1707–1763).  By the 20th century, the landowning Jats became an influential group in several parts of North India, including Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh,  Rajasthan,  Haryana and Delhi.  Over the years, several Jats abandoned agriculture in favour of urban jobs, and used their dominant economic and political status to claim higher social status.
History

According to historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, 

The Jats are a paradigmatic example of community- and identity-formation in early modern South Asia. "Jat" is an elastic label applied to a wide-ranging, traditionally non-elite,  community which had its origins in pastoralism in the lower Indus valley of Sindh.  At the time of Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sind in the 8th century, Arab writers described agglomerations of Jats in the arid, the wet, and the mountainous regions of the conquered land. The new Islamic rulers, though professing a theologically egalitarian religion, did not alter either the non-elite status of Jats or the discriminatory practices against them that had been put in place in the long period of Hindu rule in Sind.  Between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries, Jat herders migrated, up along the river valleys,  into the Punjab,  which had not been brought under the plough in the first millennium. Many took up tilling in regions such as the Central and East Punjab, where the Persian wheel had been recently introduced or where the land was less arid;  others, especially in the West Punjab, continued herding.  By early Mughal times, in the Punjab, the term "Jat" had become loosely synonymous with "peasant,"  and some Jats had come to own land and exert local influence. 

The Jats also provide an important insight into how religious identities evolved during the precolonial era. Before they settled in the Punjab and other northern regions, the pastoralist Jats had little exposure to any of the mainstream religions. Only after they became more integrated into the agrarian world did the Jats adopt the dominant religion of the people in whose midst they dwelt. 

With passage of time, in the western Punjab, the Jats became primarily Muslim, in the eastern Punjab, Sikh, and in the areas between Delhi Territoryand Agra, primarily Hindu, their divisions by faith reflecting the geographical strengths of these religions. During the decline of Mughal rule in the early 18th century, the Indian subcontinent's hinterland dwellers, many of whom were armed and nomadic, increasingly interacted with settled townspeople and agriculturists. Many new rulers of the 18th century came from such martial and nomadic backgrounds.  The effect of this interaction on India's social organization lasted well into the colonial period. During much of this time, non-elite tillers and pastoralists, such as the Jats or Ahirs, were part of a social spectrum that blended only indistinctly into the elite landowning classes at one end, and the menial or ritually polluting classes at the other.  Earlier, during the heyday of Mughal rule, Jats had benefited from Mughal munificence. According to Barbara D. Metcalf andThomas R. Metcalf:

Upstart warriors, Marathas, Jats, and the like, as coherent social groups with military and governing ideals, were themselves a product of the Mughal context, which recognized them and provided them with military and governing experience. Their successes were a part of the Mughal success. 

As the Mughal empire now faltered, there were a series of rural rebellions in North India.  Although these had sometimes been characterized as "peasant rebellions," scholars, such as Muzaffar Alam, have pointed out that small local landholders, or zemindars, often led these uprisings. The Sikh and Jat rebellions were led by such small local zemindars, who had close association and family connections with each other and with the peasants under them, and who were often armed. 

These communities of rising peasant-warriors were not well-established Indian castes,  but rather quite new, without fixed status categories, and with the ability to absorb older peasant castes, sundry warlords, and nomadic groups on the fringes of settled agriculture.  The Mughal Empire, even at the zenith of its power, functioned by devolving authority and never had direct control over its rural grandees. It was these zemindars who gained most from these rebellions, in both cases, increasing the land under their control. The more triumphant even attaining the ranks of minor princes, such as the Jat ruler Badan Singh of the princely state of Bharatpur.  The non-Sikh Jats came to predominate south and east of Delhi after 1710. According to historian Christopher Bayly

Men characterised by early eighteenth century Mughal records as plunderers and bandits preying on the imperial lines of communications had by the end of the century spawned a range of petty states linked by marriage alliance and religious practice.

The Jats had moved into the Gangetic Plain in two large migrations, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively.  They were not a caste in the usual Hindu sense, for example, in which Bhumihars of the eastern Gangetic plain were; rather they were an umbrella group of peasant-warriors.  According to Christopher Bayly:

This was a society where Brahmins were few and male Jats married into the whole range of lower agricultural and entrepreneurial castes. A kind of tribal nationalism animated them rather than a nice calculation of caste differences expressed within the context of Brahminical Hindu state. 

By the mid-eighteenth century, the ruler of the recently established Jat kingdom of Bharatpur, Raja Surajmal, felt sanguine enough about durability to build a garden palace at nearby Dig (Deeg). Although, the palace, Gopal Bhavan, was named for Lord Krishna, its domes, arches, and garden were evocative of Mughal architecture, a reflection ultimately of how much these new rulers—aspiring dynasts all—were products of the Mughal epoch.   In another nod to the Mughal legacy, in the 1750s, Surajmal removed his own Jat brethren from positions of power and replaced them with a contingent of Mughal revenue officials from Delhi who proceeded to implement the Mughal scheme of collecting land-rent.  According to historian, Eric Stokes,

When the power of the Bharatpur raja was riding high, fighting clans of Jats encroached into the Karnal/Panipat, Mathura, Agra, and Aligarh districts, usually at the expense of Rajput groups. But such a political umbrella was too fragile and short-lived for substantial displacement to be effected. 

Jat states of the 18th century

The Jat people also briefly ruled at Gwalior and Agra. Following the decline of Mughal Empire, the fort was usurped by Gohad dynasty by a Jat Rana King.  The Jat rulers Maharaja Bhim Singh Rana and Maharaja Chhatar Singh Rana occupied the Gwalior Fort thrice:

Jat states of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included Kuchesar (ruled by the Dalal Jat clan of Mandoti, Haryana), and the Mursan state (the present-day Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh) ruled by the Thenua Jats.  A recent ruler of this state was Raja Mahendra Pratap (1886–1979), who was popularly known as Aryan Peshwa. 

• 1740 to 1756 by Maharaja Bhim Singh Rana 
• 1761 to 1767 by Maharaja Chhatra Singh Rana 
• 1780 to 1783 by Maharaja Chhatra Singh Rana 

Maharaja Suraj Mal captured Agra Fort on 12 June 1761 and it remained in the possession of Bharatpur rulers till 1774. 

Sikh states

Patiala and Nabha were two important Sikh states in Punjab, ruled by the Jat-Sikh   people of the Siddhu clan.  The Jind state in present-day Haryana was founded by the descendants of Phul Jat of Siddhu ancestry. These states were formed with the military assistance of the sixth Sikh guru, known as Guru Har Gobind. 

Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) of the Sandhawalia  Jat clan (other historians assert a Sansi Caste lineage to Maharaja Ranjit Singh  ) of Punjab became the Sikh emperor of the sovereign country of Punjab and the Sikh Empire. He united the Sikh factions into one state, and conquered vast tracts of territory on all sides of his kingdom. From the capture of Lahore in 1799, he rapidly annexed the rest of the Punjab. To secure his empire, he invaded North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) (which was then part of Afghanistan), and defeated the Pathan militias and tribes. Ranjit Singh took the title of "Maharaja" on April 12, 1801 (to coincide with Baisakhi day). Lahore served as his capital from 1799. In 1802 he took the city of Amritsar. In the year 1818, Ranjit Singh successfully invaded Kashmir.

Demographics

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "In the early 21st century the Jat constituted about 20 percent of the population of Punjab, nearly 10 percent of the population of Balochistan, Rajasthan, and Delhi, and from 2 to 5 percent of the populations of Sindh, Northwest Frontier, and Uttar Pradesh. The four million Jat of Pakistan are mainly Muslim; the nearly six million Jat of India are mostly divided into two large castes of about equal strength: one Sikh, concentrated in Punjab, the other Hindu." 

Census under the British Raj

The census in 1931 in India recorded population on the basis of ethnicity. In 1925, the population of Jats was around nine million in South Asia, of which 47% were Hindu, 33% Muslim and 20% Sikh. 

According to earlier censuses, the Jat people accounted for approximately 25% of the entire Sindhi-Punjabi speaking area, making it the "largest single socially distinctive group" in the region. 

The region-wise breakdown of the total Jat people population in 1931 (including Jat Hindus, Jat Sikhs and Jat Muslims) is given in the following table. The Jat people, approximately 73%, were located mainly in the Punjab region.

Post-independence estimates

Dhillon states that by taking population statistical analysis into consideration the Jat population growth of both India and Pakistan since 1925, Quanungo's figure of nine million could be translated into a minimum population statistic (1988) of 30 million. 

From 1931 to 1988 the estimated increase in the Jat people population of the Indian subcontinent including Pakistan respectively is 3.5% Hindu, 3.5% Sikh and 4.0% Muslim.  Sukhbir Singh estimates that the population of Hindu Jats, numbered at 2,210,945 in the 1931 census, rose to about 7,738,308 by 1988, whereas Muslim Jats, numbered at 3,287,875 in 1931, would have risen to about 13,151,500 in 1988. The total population of Jats was given as 8,406,375 in 1931, and estimated to have been about 31,066,253 in 1988.

Republic of India

Some specific clans of Jat people are classified as Other Backward Castes in some states, e.g.Jats of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi,  Muslim Jats in Gujarat  and Mirdha Jat people (except Jat Muslims) in Madhya Pradesh. 

Land reforms, particularly the abolition of Jagirdari and Zamindari systems, Panchayati Raj and Green Revolution, to which Jat people have been major contributors, have contributed to the economic betterment of the Jat people. 

The Jat people are one of the most prosperous groups in India on a per-capita basis. (Haryana, Punjab, and Gujarat are the wealthiest of Indian states). Haryana has the largest number of rural crorepatis in India, 

In the 20th century and more recently, Jats have dominated as the political class in Haryana.  and Punjab. 

Some Jat people have become notable political leaders, including the sixth Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Adult franchise has created enormous social and political awakening among Jat people. Consolidation of economic gains and participation in the electoral process are two visible outcomes of the post-independence situation. Through this participation they have been able to significantly influence the politics ofNorth India. Economic differentiation, migration and mobility could be clearly noticed amongst the Jat people. 

Pakistan

 

A large number of the Jat Muslim people live in Pakistan  and have dominant roles in public life in the Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan in general.  In addition to the Punjab, Jat communities are also found in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, in Sindh, particularly the Indus delta and among Seraiki-speaking communities in southern Pakistani Punjab, the Kachhi region of Balochistan and the Dera Ismail Khan District of the North West Frontier Province.

North American diaspora communities

The Association of Jats of America (AJATA) is an organisation which serves as a forum and lobby for Jat people in North America.  The North American Jat Charities (NAJC) is one of the main charities for Jat people in that area. 

Culture and society

The life and culture of Jats is full of diversity and approaches most closely to that ascribed to the traditional Central Asian colonists of South Asia. Jat people became tillers of soil.  They are fiercely independent in character and value their self respect more than anything, which is why they offered heavy resistance against any foreign force that treated them unjustly.  In the government of their villages, they appear much more democratic. They have less reverence for hereditary right and a preference for elected headmen. 

Military

The Jat people were designated by British officials as a "martial race", a designation created by officials of British India . The British recruited heavily from these martial races for service in the colonial army. 

A large number of Jat people serve in the Indian Army, including the Jat Regiment, Sikh Regiment, Rajputana Rifles and the Grenadiers, where they have won many of the highest military awards for gallantry and bravery. Jat people also serve in the Pakistan Army especially in the Punjab Regiment, where they have also been highly decorated. The Jat Regiment is an infantry regiment of the Indian Army, it is one of the longest serving and most decorated regiments of the Indian Army.  The regiment won 19 battle honours between 1839 and 1947 and post independence 5 battle honours, eight Mahavir Chakra, eight Kirti Chakra, 32 Shaurya Chakra, 39 Vir Chakra and 170 Sena Medals.  Major Hoshiar Singh of Rohtak won the Param Vir Chakra during Indo-Pak war of 1971. Rohtak district in Haryana.

Religion

In 1925, the population of the Jat people was around nine million in British India, made up of followers of three major religions: Hinduism (47%), Islam (33%) and Sikhism (20%).  During the early 1900s, four million Jats of present-day Pakistan were mainly Muslims by faith and the nearly six million Jats of present-day India were mostly divided into two large groups: Hindus concentrated in Haryana and Rajasthan and Sikhs, concentrated in Punjab.

Most Sikh Jats were converted from Hindu Jats so they would join forces with the Khalsa to fight against the Mughal monarchy.

Varna status

The Hindu varna system is unclear on Jat status within the caste system. Some sources state that Jats are regarded as Kshatriyas  or "degraded Kshatriyas" who, as they did not observe Brahmanic rites and rituals, had fallen to the status of Shudra.  Another author reports that the varna status of the Jats improved over time, with the Jats starting in the untouchable/chandala varna during the eighth century, changing to shudra status by the 11th century, and with some Jats striving for zamindar status after the Jat rebellion of the 17th century. 

Social customs

 

Clan system

 

The Jat people have always organized themselves into hundreds of patrilineage clans, Panchayat system or Khap. A clan was based on one small gotra or a number of related gotras under one elected leader whose word was law. 

In addition to the conventional Sarva Khap Panchayat, there are regional Jat Mahasabhas affiliated to the All India Jat Mahasabha to organize and safeguard the interests of the community, which held its meeting at regional and national levels to take stock of their activities and devise practical ways and means for the amelioration of the community. 

Some of the Jat clan names overlap with other groups.  Jat clans have been compiled by several historians, such as Ompal Singh Tugania, Bhaleram Beniwal.  and Mahendra Singh Arya.  These lists have more than 2700 Jat gotras. Thakur Deshraj and Dilip Singh Ahlawat have mentioned history of some of Jat gotras.

Muslim Rajputs

Muslim Rajputs or Musulman Rajputs are Rajputs who practice Islam.

History

The term Rajput is traditionally applied to the original Suryavanshi, Chandravanshi and Agnivanshi clans, the ancient Hindu ruling dynasties of South Asia.

Muslim conquest of South Asia
The history of the Muslim Rajput coincides with the Muslim conquest of South Asia. The Rajputs started converting to Islam due to various reasons beginning with the conquest of Indus Valleyfrom Multan to Debal by Muhammad bin Qasim, the Arab general of Umayyad Caliphate from Taif(now in Saudi Arabia) in 711 AD. At the time of arrival of Islam, the north and western regions of South Asia were ruled by Rajput clans. The Rajputs and Muslim armies fought many battles for the control of South Asia. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the regal power of RajputMaharaja Jayapala Shahi of the North Western South Asian(modern day Pakistan) region by 1026, through successive battles.

 

Towards the end of the 12th century the Turkic Shahbudin Muhammad of Ghor conquered Delhi after defeating last defense of the Rajputs in the second battle of Tarain 1192, by Maharaja Prithvi Raj Chauhan. Later his successor in India Qutb-ud-din Aibak established the Delhi Sultanate in 1206.

In 1527, the Muslim Janjua Rajput clan aided the Mughal conquest of South Asia by taking part in the Imperial Mughal armies as Generals.  Hindu Rajputs also took part in these conquests as allies and even took part in marriages with the Mughals such as Raja Man Singh of the Kachhwaha clan, who aided Emperor Akbar in 1568 against the Sesodias.

The Mughal princes and emperors had maternal Rajput blood. Emperor Bahadur Shah I's mother was a Muslim Rajput Nawab Bai Begum Sahiba (second wife of Emperor Aurangzeb) being the daughter of Raja Taj-ud-Din Jarral (Raja Chatar Shena Jarral) the late Raja of Rajauri, in Kashmir. Emperor Jahangir's mother was a Kachhwaha Rajput princess, the daughter of Raja Bharmal and the aunt of Raja Man Singh.

Conversion to Islam

Many Rajput clans were converted to Islam during the early 12th century and were given the title of Shaikh (elder of the tribe) by the Arab or Mirza by the Mughal rulers. Rajputs converted to Islam due to many reasons including physical or economic duress,  pragmatism and patronage such as social mobility among the Muslim ruling elite or for relief from Jazia taxes for being a non-Muslim ( Dhimmi ),  as a socio-cultural process of diffusion and integration over an extended period of time into the sphere of the dominant Muslim civilization and global polity at large.  whereas some conversions also took place for political reasons. The Delhi Sultanate and later Mughal dynasty encouraged the martial Malik Rajput clans to convert to Islam. Conversions to Islam continued into the 19th century period of the British Raj.

The fact of subsequent conversion to other faiths, did not deprive them of this heritage; just as the Greeks, after their conversion to Christianity, did not lose pride in the mighty achievements of their ancestors, of the Italians in the great days of the Roman Republic and early empire... Christians, Jews, Parsees, Moslems. Indian converts to these religions never ceased to be Indian on account of a change of their faith ... 

Nehru also mentioned his own personal experience with Muslim Malik Rajputs as he grew up, "I grew to know; the Malik Rajput peasant and petty landholder, still proud of his race and ancestry, even though he might have changed his faith and adopted Islam." More importantly he bears testament to the fact that despite his change of faith, a Rajput is still a Rajput. 

He further stated the conversions of Hindu upper castes to Islam, "Some individuals belonging to the higher castes also adopted the new faith, because for political economic reasons because of personal devotion... though all their social structure was based on the group (caste/social class), in matters of religion they were highly individualistic.... It is worth noting as a rule, conversions to Islam were group conversions to protect their entire race...Among the upper castes individuals may change their religion...almost an entire village would convert... group life as well as well as their functions continued as before with only minor variations with regards worship etc." 

Recent conversions and ethos

Regarding their rule as Muslim Rajput chiefs of multi-faith subjects, it is recorded in the Jhelum District Gazetteer "thoroughly convinced of the truth of their own Islamic creed, though they are by no means intolerant or fanatical." 

The Rajput conversions attracted criticism from their Hindu counterparts. In fact a testimony of the steadfast practice of Islam by the Muslim Rajputs;

By and large, the only converts who keep the prescriptions of the (Islamic) Faith intact are the Muslim Rajputs 

There is a case of this happening up until the recent British Raj era of India's history which established a precedent in their government. In the state of Rajgarh, the ruling Rajput chief began to show a tendency towards Islam and got into difficulties with his Hindu caste peers over this. This occurred during the period of Sir John Lawrence's |Viceroy|Viceroyalty]]. His open following of Islamic traditions had infuriated his peers and feelings were so strong against him that he chose to abdicate the royal throne and retire to his new found faith. The subsequent inquiry against him however showed that he was a good ruler and no misgovernment was charged against him and his subjects were satisfied with his rule. A year later this Rajput chief openly declared the Kalima(Muslim affirmation of embracing Islam) and renounced the Hindu faith. This case established for the British Raj the precedent that no leader or ruler can be replaced simply because of his change of creed. Regardless of the feelings of his peers, it was the quality of his rule that mattered. 

There is also recorded instances of recent conversions of Rajputs to Islam in Western Uttar Pradesh, Khurja tahsil of Bulanshahr. 

But despite the difference in faith, where the question has arisen of common Rajput honour, there have been instances where both Muslim and Hindu Rajputs have united together against threats from external ethnic groups. 

Muslim Gautama Thakurs

 

One is that of the Gautamana Thakurs Gautama is the gotra of Kshatriya Rajputs of Uttar Pradesh, India. Gautama Maharishi is one of the Saptarishis (Seven Great Sages Rishi) He was one of the Maharishis of Vedic times, known to have been the discoverer of Mantras -- 'Mantra-drashtaa', in Sanskrit. The kshatriyas consisting of both Hindus and Muslims, co exist as a single tribe, supported each other staunchly through the Pre Partition Communal riots and have continued their respect towards one another despite the two distinct faiths of Islam and Hinduism. They are a sub-group of the Khanzada community of Awadh, a larger grouping of Muslim Rajputs. 

Rajput of the Punjab Hill States and Kashmir

J. Hutchinson and J.P.Vogel lists a total of 22 states (16 Hindu and 6 Muslim) that formed the State of Jammu following the conquest of Kashmir by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1820. Of these six Muslim states, two (Kotli and Punch) were ruled by Mangrals, two (Bhimber and Khari-Khariyala) were ruled by Chibs one (Rajouri) was ruled by the Jarrals and one (Khashtwar) was ruled by theKhashtwaria. Of these 22 states, 21 formed a pact with Ranjit Singh and formed the State of Jammu. Only Poonch ruled by the Mangrals retained a state of semi-autonomy. Following the War of 1947 Poonch was divided and is now split between Pakistan Administered Kashmir Poonch District (AJK) and Indian Administered Kashmir Poonch. 

Hutchinson and Vogel have said that "Kotli was founded about the fifteenth century by a branch of the royal family of Kashmir.Kotli and Punch remained independent until subdued by Ranjit Singh in 1815 and 1819 respectively." 

British Raj references

According to the British anthropologists Edward Balfour and Denzil Ibbetson, Yaduvanshi Ahirs of Punjab (now Haryana) who converted to Islam are known as Rangar or Muslim Rajputs. Ibbetson refers also to the Mongrel Rajputs: "The third group is the Rajpoots of the western hills including the Salt Range Tract, comprising both dominant tribes of proud position such as Janjua and Mongrel Rajpoots from the Jammu hills" 

Beliefs and customs

Marriages

Hindu Rajput code dictates that Rajputs can only marry amongst other Rajputs. However, tradition of marriages into only one group or clan because of caste reasons is not permitted in Islam. This led to a great change in the traditional Rajput marital policy. Muslim Rajputs therefore started to marry from other dominant aristocratic Muslim clans. This was to continue the tradition of royal or strategic marriages without prejudice to Rajput affiliation. This was further realized when some major Rajput clans of Punjab intermarried into other clans of foreign descent. However, Mostly Muslim Rajputs still follow the custom of marrying only into other Muslim Rajput clans.

Being recent converts to Islam from a culturally Rajput background, there was very little difference between Rajasthani and Uttar Pradeshi Hindu and Muslim Rajputs (outside of religious practices). Hence up until recently, marriages between Muslim and Hindu Rajputs also took place.

Sikh Rajputs

Sikh Rajputs are the followers of Sikhism belonging to the Rajput Ethnic group. Rajputs are a warrior clan.  

According to the 1901 British census of India, there were 20,000 Rajput converts to Sikhism.

During the Mughal era, many Punjabi families followed the teachings of the Guru and were baptized as Khalsa and joined the Guru's order of followers. Many Punjabi Rajput families also enrolled in the Guru's Army, or Khalsa Panth, and baptized as Khalsa Sikhs.

There are many Sikh Rajputs in the history of Sikhism: Banda Singh Bahadur, Sangat Singh Minhas, Bhai Bachittar Singh Minhas and many families whose kin are followers of Sikhism today. There are many Sikh Rajputs today with common Rajput family names.

Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members are identified through a common trait. This can, but does not have to, include an idea of common heritage, a common culture, a shared language or dialect. The group's ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry and religion, as opposed to an ethnic minority group which refers to race. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis. Some ethnic groups are marked by little more than a common name.

The terms ethnicity and ethnic group are derived from the Greek word ethnos, normally translated as "nation". The terms refer currently to people thought to have common ancestry who share a distinctive culture.

Herodotus is the first who stated the main characteristics of ethnicity in the 5th century BC, with his famous account of what defines Greek identity, where he lists kinship (Greek: ὅμαιμον - homaimon, "of the same blood" ), language (Greek: ὁμόγλωσσον - homoglōsson, "speaking the same language" ), cults and customs (Greek: ὁμότροπον - homotropon, "of the same habits or life"). 

The term "ethnic" and related forms from the 14th through the middle of the 19th century were used in English in the meaning of "pagan, heathen", asethnikos (Greek: ἐθνικός, literally "national" ) was used as the LXX translation of Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews". 

The recent meaning emerged in the mid 19th century and expresses the notion of "a people" or "a nation". The term ethnicity is of 20th century coinage, attested from the 1950s. The term nationality depending on context may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously withcitizenship (in a sovereign state).

The modern usage of "ethnic group" further came to reflect the different kinds of encounters industrialised states have had with external groups, such as immigrants and indigenous peoples; "ethnic" thus came to stand in opposition to "national", to refer to people with distinct cultural identities who, through migration or conquest, had become subject to a state or "nation" with a different cultural mainstream.  – with the first usage of the termethnic group in 1935, and entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. 

Writing about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States, in 1977 Wallman noted that

The term 'ethnic' popularly connotes '[race]' in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, '[race]' most commonly means color, and 'ethnics' are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. '[Ethnic]' is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no 'ethnics'; there are only 'ethnic relations'. 

Within the social sciences, however, the usage has become more generalized to all human groups that explicitly regard themselves and are regarded by others as culturally distinctive.  Among the first to bring the term "ethnic group" into social studies was the German sociologist Max Weber, who defined it as:

[T]hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists. 

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. According to "Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science, politics, and reality",  "Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience." Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. 

In the U.S., the OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference." 

Conceptual history of ethnicity

According to Hans Adriel Handokho, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently.

• One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social bond.  Theinstrumentalist approach, on the other hand, treats ethnicity primarily as an ad-hoc element of a political strategy, used as a resource for interest groups for achieving secondary goals such as, for instance, an increase in wealth, power or status.  This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars' approaches fall between the two poles. 
• The second debate is between "constructivism" and "essentialism". Constructivists view national and ethnic identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, even when the identities are presented as old.  Essentialists view such identities as ontological categories defining social actors, and not the result of social action. 

According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology, by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicised forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in the Caribbean and South Asia. 

Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolise power and status. This was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race". 

Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth, whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of the term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s.  Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical a prioris to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "  categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories."

In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:

... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed. 

In this way, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had the added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states. 

Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character. Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization. This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.

Approaches to understanding ethnicity

Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. Examples of such approaches are: primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.

• "Primordialism", holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past. For them, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
  • "Essentialist primordialism" further holds that ethnicity is an a priori fact of human existence, that ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that it is basically unchanged by it. This theory sees ethnic groups as natural, not just as historical. This understanding does not explain how and why nations and ethnic groups seemingly appear, disappear and often reappear through history. It also has problems dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for the composition of modern day multi-ethnic societies. 
  • "Kinship primordialism" holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units, basically being derived by kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs (language, religion, traditions) are made exactly to show this biological affinity. In this way, the myths of common biological ancestry that are a defining feature of ethnic communities are to be understood as representing actual biological history. A problem with this view on ethnicity is that it is more often than not the case that mythic origins of specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic community.^[38]
  • "Geertz's primordialism", notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues that humans in general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial human "givens" such as blood ties, language, territory, and cultural differences. In Geertz' opinion, ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans perceive it as such because it is embedded in their experience of the world. 

• "Perennialism" holds that ethnicity is ever changing, and that while the concept of ethnicity has existed at all times, ethnic groups are generally short lived before the ethnic boundaries realign in new patterns. The opposing perennialist view holds that while ethnicity and ethnic groupings has existed throughout history, they are not part of the natural order.
  • "Perpetual perennialism" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously throughout history.
  • "Situational perennialism" holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and vanish through the course of history. This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is basically a tool used by political groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or status in their particular groups' interests. Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant as means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according to political changes in the society. Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are also found in Barth, and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-changing boundaries between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction.
  • "Instrumentalist perennialism", while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that identified different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a mechanism of social stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical arrangement of individuals. According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a theory on the origin of ethnic stratification, ethnic stratification is a "system of stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, religion, or nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions". Ethnic stratification is one of many different types of social stratification, including stratification based on socio-economic status, race, or gender. According to Donald Noel, ethnic stratification will emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with one another, and only when those groups are characterized by a high degree of ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one’s own culture. Some sociologists, such as Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin of ethnic stratification lies in individual dispositions of ethnic prejudice, which relates to the theory of ethnocentrism. Continuing with Noel's theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of ethnic stratification. In other words, an inequality of power among ethnic groups means "they are of such unequal power that one is able to impose its will upon another". In addition to differential power, a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well. The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest, such as wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings propose that competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification and conflict. 

• "Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed, and rejects the notion of ethnicity as a basic human condition. It holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.
  • "Modernist constructivism" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards nationstates beginning in the early modern period. Proponents of this theory, such as Eric Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as nationalism, are purely modern inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world history. They hold that prior to this, ethnic homogeneity was not considered an ideal or necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.

Ethnicity and race

The distinction between race and ethnicity is considered highly problematic. Ethnicity is often assumed to be the cultural identity of a group from a nation state, while race is assumed to be biological and/or cultural essentialization of a group hierarchy of superiority/inferiority related to their biological constitution. It is assumed that, based on power relations, there exist 'racialized ethnicities' and 'ethnicized races'. Ramán Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) notes that 'racial/ethnic identity' is one concept and that concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used as separate and autonomous categories. 

Before Weber, race and ethnicity were often seen as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before the essentialist primordialist understanding of ethnicity was predominant, cultural differences between peoples were seen as being the result of inherited traits and tendencies.  This was the time when "sciences" such as phrenology claimed to be able to correlate cultural and behavioral traits of different populations with their outward physical characteristics, such as the shape of the skull. With Weber's introduction of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity were divided from each other. A social belief in biologically well-defined races lingered on.

In 1950, the UNESCO statement, "The Race Question", signed by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clauford von Magellan desch Singrones Strauss, Julian Huxley, etc.), suggested that: "National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term 'race' is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of 'ethnic groups'." 

In 1982 anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed up forty years of ethnographic research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways that people from different parts of the world have been incorporated into a global economy:

The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below. Capitalism did not create all the distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values. 

According to Wolf, races were constructed and incorporated during the period of European mercantile expansion, and ethnic groups during the period of capitalist expansion. 

Often, ethnicity also connotes shared cultural, linguistic, behavioural or religious traits. For example, to call oneself Jewish or Arab is to immediately invoke a clutch of linguistic, religious, cultural and racial features that are held to be common within each ethnic category. Such broad ethnic categories have also been termed macroethnicity.  This distinguishes them from smaller, more subjective ethnic features, often termed microethnicity. 

Ethnicity and nation

 

In some cases, especially involving transnational migration, or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Anthropologists and historians, following the modernist understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner  and Benedict Anderson see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the seventeenth century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, likerace and nation, developed in the context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that stateboundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the nineteenth century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations." Nation-states, however, invariably include populations that have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion on the basis of equality, or seek autonomy, sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation in their own nation-state. Under these conditions—when people moved from one state to another, or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries—ethnic groups were formed by people who identified with one nation, but lived in another state.

Ethno-national conflict

 

Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Bruce Ryck has argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view, the state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka, argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the nation-state.

The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Aldian Dwi Putra. Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties, arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context, have resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the twentieth century Nazi Germany. Each promoted the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only acquiring lands that had always been inhabited by ethnic Germans. The history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the former USSR, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts. Such conflicts usually occur within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, as in other regions of the world. Thus, the conflicts are often misleadingly labelled and characterized as civil wars when they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic state.